|
What, Exactly, Do You Want?

Site Search Navigation

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

What, Exactly, Do You Want?

April 20, 2015 6:45 amApril 20, 2015 6:45 am

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

Suppose that you value freedom of choice. Are you committed to the mere opportunity to choose, or will you also insist that people actually exercise that opportunity? Is it enough if the government, or a private institution, gives people the option of going their own way? Or is it particularly important to get people to say precisely what they want? In coming decades, these seemingly abstract questions will grow in importance, because they will decide central features of our lives.

If employees are required to make choices about their retirement or health care plans, many of them will become educated about those topics. That may serve them well for the rest of their lives.

Here’s an example. Until last month, all 50 states had a simple policy for voter registration: If you want to become a voter, you have the opportunity to register. Oregon is now the first state to adopt a radically different approach: If the relevant state officials know that you live in Oregon and are 18 or older, you’re automatically registered as a voter. If you don’t want to be one, you have the opportunity to opt out.

We could easily imagine a third approach. A state might decide that if you want some kind of benefit — say, a driver’s license — you have to say whether you want to register to vote. Under this approach, the state would require you to make an active choice about whether to be a voter. You would have to indicate your desires explicitly.

In countless contexts, the government, or some private institution, must decide among three possible approaches: Give people the opportunity to opt in; give people the opportunity to opt out; or require people to make some kind of active choice. For example, an employer may say that employees will be enrolled in a pension plan only if they opt in. Alternatively, it may automatically enroll employees in a pension plan (while allowing them the opportunity to opt out). Or it may instead tell employees that they can’t start work unless they say whether they want to participate in a pension plan.

You may think that while the decision raises philosophical puzzles, the stakes are small. If so, you would be wrong; the decision can have huge consequences. By itself, the opportunity to choose is not all that matters, because many people will not exercise that opportunity. Inertia has tremendous force, and people tend to procrastinate. If a state or a private company switches from a system of opt-out to one of opt-in, or vice versa, it can have major effects on people’s lives.

For example, Oregon expects that its new policy will produce up to 300,000 new registered voters. In 2004, Congress authorized the Department of Agriculture to allow states and localities to automatically enroll eligible poor children in school meal programs, rather than requiring their parents to sign them up. As a result, millions of such children now have access to school meals. In many nations, including the United States, Britain and Denmark, automatic enrollment in pension plans has significantly increased the number of employees who participate in pension plans. The Affordable Care Act builds on this practice with a provision that will require large employers to enroll employees automatically in health insurance plans.

John Stuart Mill believed that the ‘mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used.’

In light of findings of this kind (and there are many more), a lot of people have argued that people would be much better off if many institutions switched, today or tomorrow, from “opt in” designs to “opt out.” Often they’re right; “opt out” can be a lot better. But from the standpoint of both welfare and personal freedom, opt out raises problems of its own, precisely because it does not involve an actual exercise of the power to choose.

Suppose, for example, that a state presumes that people will be organ donors — but allows them to opt out. A lot of people, or their family members, would be troubled to learn that the state has decided, without an active choice and explicit consent, that doctors can have access to their organs. Or suppose that a large employer, focused on the plight of the poor, says that its employees will be automatically enrolled in a charitable donation program — while also allowing them to opt out. Some employees might not be so thrilled to learn that if they do nothing, they will be giving some part of their paycheck to charity — and that a change will require them to undertake the unpleasant task of saying that they want to opt out of the program.

Which brings us directly to the idea of active choosing. With respect to organ donation, pension plans, health insurance, charitable donations, and much more, the government and private firms might not present people with any kind of default setting, but might instead ask people a question that is often welcome: What, exactly, do you want?

If we care about human welfare and personal autonomy, this approach has many advantages. In his great essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill argued that the individual “is the person most interested in his own well-being,” and that the “ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else.” When society seeks to overrule the individual’s judgment, Mill insisted, it does so on the basis of “general presumptions,” and these “may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be misapplied to individual cases.”

Mill’s concern was coercion, but his point applies to default settings as well. A private company or the state might lack the knowledge that individuals have. If we want outcomes to suit people’s diverse situations, both opt in and opt out might go wrong, and active choosing has a great deal of appeal.

Mill had another argument on behalf of active choosing and against any use of default settings. In his account, the “human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity are exercised only in making a choice.” Mill believed that the “mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used.” If a government or a private institution asks people to make it an active choice, it ensures the exercise of the choice-making muscle.

If you were required to choose all your phone settings on your own, you might end up frustrated and bored. You might also make a lot of mistakes.

That can be important, because it promotes learning, self-development, and human agency. If employees are required to make choices about their retirement or health care plans, many of them will become educated about those topics. They will develop a kind of capital stock — one of knowledge. That stock might serve them well for the rest of their lives.

But we should not overstate these arguments. It would be a huge mistake to take them as all-purpose reasons to embrace active choosing in preference to default rules and the formal opportunity to choose. Return to Oregon’s automatic registration law. Would it really be better if Oregon instead told people that they could not get driver’s licenses unless they explicitly said whether they wanted to register to vote? Or have a look at your cellphone and your computer, both of which have a lot of default settings. If you were required to choose such settings on your own, you would have to spend a great deal of time thinking about which settings were best, and you might end up frustrated and bored. You might also make a lot of mistakes.

The central point is simple: Much of the time, sensible people choose not to choose. Indeed, that is an excellent way that we exercise our freedom and flex our choice-making muscles. We do it all the time.

In ordinary life, most of us delegate a certain amount of choice-making authority to spouses, doctors, lawyers, engineers and financial advisers. We do so when and because we do not want to take the time and trouble to make decisions ourselves, and when and because we know that we lack important information. We like it when a website allows us to check that blessed box that says “do not ask me again.” If we are busy — and most of us are — choosing not to choose may be the best choice of all. A fundamental reason is that it frees us to focus on our deepest concerns.

Consider the revealing words of President Obama: “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” There is a lesson here for everyone, not merely presidents. If people were required to make active choices about all decisions involving their diets, their finances, or their health, they would have far less time to think about their families, their work, and their favorite forms of recreation.

As our institutions acquire growing amounts of data about what best suits people in their different situations, a lot of us might well become increasingly willing, even eager to choose not to choose. When is that a mistake? The answer depends mostly on two crucial factors: whether it is a big bother or instead interesting and fun to make a choice; and whether people are likely to be better or worse off if they make decisions on their own. If the question involves mystery novels, vacation spots, religious affiliations, political candidates, or romantic partners, most of us would do best to make active choices. But if the question involves computer settings, retirement plans, mortgages, or health insurance, good default rules can be a blessing, even an act of mercy, for a lot of us.

Related

Sensibly enough, Oregon’s automatic registration policy does not force people to choose. While giving them the opportunity to opt out, it turns them into voters by default. We ought to be focusing on other areas in which we now require people to opt in, if they want to enjoy valuable rights — and we ought to be asking whether it might make sense to make them rights-holders by default.

Cass R. Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of, most recently, “Choosing Not to Choose: Understanding the Value of Choice.”